| ||||||
Improving Access to Education and Training for TANF Participants |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From Center for Law and Social Policy: The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant is one of the major sources of funding for services designed to help low-income parents succeed in the workplace. The TANF law limits the degree to which states can count TANF families engaged in education and training activities toward federal work participation rate requirements---an unfortunate limitation, given the strong link between educational attainment and earnings. We recommend that Congress remove these arbitrary limits and allow vocational educational training to count for at least 24 months, along with allowing adult education and English language services to count for at least six months so that students can transition into training. Instead of rewarding states for their efforts to help welfare recipients achieve self-sufficiency, the new law acted as if the past decade of welfare reform had never happened. ACF issued narrow definitions of the countable work activities, definitions that unnecessarily restrict state flexibility to use work-related activities that have been shown to be effective in helping families enter employment and get better jobs. The regulations also put arbitrary restrictions on the types of education that can count as vocational educational training, even beyond the existing statutory 12-month limit on how long such training can count. Students participating in one such integrated program---Washington State's I-BEST program---earned five times as many college credits as traditional English as a second language (ESL) students did and were 15 times more likely to complete job training. Adult basic education and ESL courses should be allowed to count for all hours of participation for at least six months, so that students can transition into training, and thereafter when integrated into vocational education programs.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
